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This project has shown how a ceramic vessel can be used as a metaphor for human emotion and feeling. People are like ceramic vessels because they hold in emotion how vessels hold liquids or solids. Artists that are reviewed in the project are Peter Voulkos, David Leach and Bob Witt. The body of work is made up of a series of teapots that are built of a base, body, spout, lid and handle. Changing the position of any one of these parts can give the teapot a different feeling. / Department of Art

In this arts-based thesis for a Masters degree in art education, I explored the meaning of my artwork through a constructivist investigation. During the process of artist research and making artwork, I was able to push boundaries for my art and myself and I was able to discover what kind of artist I was and what meaning was behind my artwork. This process of research,questioning, reflective documentation, and discovery has provided new tools and styles for teaching my students how to find their own personal voice in their artwork.

This thesis aims to evaluate the compositional changes that occur when raw clays are transformed into finished vessels, and how these compositional changes impact provenance research. Petrographic and chemical techniques are used to analyse clays at each stage in the production sequence used by Zulu potters in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The results of this research demonstrate that tempering behaviour, particularly the mixing of clays, can significantly alter the composition of ceramic vessels, depending on the ratio of clay types. The provenance of mixed clays and vessels can be determined when the range of variation between clay sources is known. Different ratios of constituent clays significantly affect the composition of finished vessels.

The literature concerning the injection moulding of engineering ceramics has been reviewed. This indicated that a number of claims had been made for the successful use of different organic binders during moulding and their removal prior to sintering. However, many of the claims were not supported by detailed/exact eScperimental evidence as to powder-binder compositions, moulding conditions, moulded properties, debinding times/cycles, or details of the structure and properties of the solid ceramic bodies produced. From the available information it was clear that there were few systematic and scientific investigations concerning the understanding of each stage of the injection moulding process. The present research programme has been carried out in two phases as follows. The first phase was concerned with the reinvestigation and re-evaluation of binder systems claimed to be successful for the injection moulding of alumina ceramics. The binders re-investigated included the thermoplastic-based binders such as polystyrene, polyacetal and atactic polypropylene and the water-based methylcellulose (Rivers) binder system. Alumina was chosen as the main powder to be investigated due to its simple handling and, highest applications amongst ceramic materials and on the basis that there is incomplete published work for almost every step of the injection moulding process. During the first stage of this work the optimum properties such as powder-binder compositions, mixing and moulding conditions, debinding properties, green and sintered densities provided by each binder system were determined. The results of these investigations showed that all the previous (re-evaluated) binder systems had major limitations and disadvantages. These included low volume loading (64 % maximum) of the alumina powder resulting in rather low sintered densities (96 % maximum-of theoretical density) and very long debinding times in the case of the thermoplastic-based binders. it ry low alumina volume loading (55 % maximum resulting in a 94 % . sintered theoretical density) and long moulding cycle time (- 5 min) along with adhesion and distortion problems during demoulding occurred in the case of the water-based methylcellulose binder system. Further work did not appear worthwhile. The newly developed binder systems have been used with a number of other powders such as zirconia, silicon nitride, silicon carbide, tungsten carbide-6 weight % cobalt and iron-2 weight % nickel, to establish- whether injection moulding is feasible. Optimum properties such as powder volume loadings, mixing, moulding, demoulding, moulded densities, debinding and some sintered density results showed that these new binder systems can also be used successfully for the injection moulding of other ceramic and metallic powders, although a fuller evaluation of the properties such as optimum sintered densities and mechanical properties is required.

Industries, such as the automotive industry, aim to increase the reliability of their products to match the demands and assure the safety of their clients. The proposition of a third generation advanced high strength steel is introduced in this study. The ideas surrounding the behavior of transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) steels and particle reinforced composites are combined and investigated. A finite element model (FEM) is created to investigate the effects of dispersed ceramic particles with varying parameters throughout a TRIP steel microstructure and identify key mechanisms responsible for achieving simultaneous enhancements in strength and ductility. The ceramic material utilized and volume fraction of the ceramic particles dispersed throughout the representative volume element (RVE) are the two varying parameters investigated in this study. Through observing the equivalent plastic strain (PEEQ) distribution at different strain levels up to 100%, evidence of failure controlled by strain localization throughout the ferrite matrix is more prevalent through the softer, austenitic microstructures with 5% or less ceramic particle inclusions. On the other hand, the presence of the hard martensite constituents, or 10% volume fraction of ceramics in an austenitic structure, proposed that failure would engender due to void nucleation at the harder constituent/ferrite interfaces. These voids will then grow and coalesce throughout the microstructure, resulting in a crack. The increased addition of ceramic inclusions also illustrates a simultaneous enhancement in the ultimate tensile strength and ultimate strain in all microstructures. Tensile strength increases by a total of 18% with 10% volume ceramic particles in a TRIP steel microstructure. Between utilizing silicon carbide, cementite, zirconia and aluminum oxide ceramic particles, the microstructure that illustrated the most optimal enhanced performance in strength and ductility was the 10% volume fraction aluminum oxide particle reinforced TRIP steel composite.